

It is then suggested that the reasons underlying the decision to expel Jews from Rome were essentially the same as those triggering expulsions of other groups such as Isis worshipers, devotees of Bacchus, or astrologers. It is argued that the decision to banish Jews from Rome resulted from pragmatic and not from specifically anti-Jewish considerations: Roman magistrates just wanted to maintain law and order.

In contrast to earlier scholarship on the subject, this article seeks to place the expulsions of Jews from first-century Rome into the larger framework of Roman policy toward both Jews and other non-Roman peoples. As a result, scholars have offered different reconstructions of what really happened. Ancient literary sources offer contradictory information on these expulsions. In the first century, Jews were expelled from Rome on various occasions. It is a kind of biography of To Euangelion (I prefer: 'The Announcement') through the first three Christian generations, which should help to contextualise the Romans study. The essay that precedes it I wrote for the 2009 volume. Hendrickson handed the book off to Baker, and Baker returned the rights to me. I reprinted it with slight updates for Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins: Methods and Categories (Hendrickson 2009). by Ann Jervis and Peter Richardson (1994). The second essay, on Paul's defence of his Euangelion in Romans, first appeared in a FS for Richard Longenecker, Gospel in Paul, ed. That is why it is programmatically featured only by the Paul-like 'Mark' but then scrubbed by 'Matthew', 'Luke', and 'John', though the first two depend heavily on Mark.

Breaking with the prevailing scholarly assumption that 'to euangelion' (usually 'the gospel') was shared among early Christians, who differed only about its content, I argue that this language was distinctively Paul's and understood by both him and his many detractors as such. This a brace of chapters on Paul's situation in the first Christian generation.
